Dutch soccer director vows to punish anti-Jewish chanters

THE HAGUE (JTA) — The director of a soccer team from the Dutch city of Utrecht has vowed to punish fans who sang anti-Semitic chants during a recent match.

“Racism will not be tolerated in the stadium,” Wilco van Schaik, general director of FC Utrecht, told the Dutch news agency ANP. The report did not specify what steps would be taken against the fans.

The chants were made during in a sing-along led by Danny Temming, a Dutch folk singer, who has distanced himself from the anti-Jewish slogans during the match in Utrecht on Oct. 26.

Temming told the daily AD that he “only began to sing the first lines” during the match, “and then the fans [of Utrecht’s soccer team] started to sing their own texts.”

The match last Friday was between FC Utrecht and FC Groningen.

Teun den Hartog, chairman of FC Utrecht’s fan club, said a flyer instructing fans how to behave was passed out before the match, in an effort to educate fans on refraining from “racist slogans.”

The leading soccer club ADO Den Haag banned eight fans in April from entering the city’s soccer stadium for five to 10 years, following protests by the Hague-based watchdog group CIDI and court instructions. The fans were filmed shouting "Hamas, Jews to the gas" during a match with the Amsterdam soccer club Ajax.

Dutch soccer fans often refer to players and supporters of Ajax as “Jews” at matches. Ajax supporters often wave Israeli flags, symbolism that has become associated with the soccer club.